


Falling Behind

by Churbooseanon



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Blindness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-04
Updated: 2014-12-04
Packaged: 2018-02-28 04:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2718488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Churbooseanon/pseuds/Churbooseanon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>York doesn't just lose one eye in the fight against Tex.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Falling Behind

**Author's Note:**

> For Bonus Round One: Alternate Universes, for the RVBSJ 2014

Four Seven Niner's name, it turns out, is Leilani, but she tells him to call her Lacey.

The way she offers him her name, voice soft and gentle, makes him double over in his seat. He doesn't cry, though. Turns out he's physically incapable of it now. He'll sit there, his shoulders will shake with his sobs, his voice will get raw, but nothing comes. His stomach churns with acid, his back hurts, his voice fades, but nothing ever comes.

All the wonders of modern medicine, and he can't even _cry_. 

There is no amount of North's hand rubbing soothing circles on his back that can make it better. Especially since North can get to his back so easily. 

They took his armor. He didn't see them do it. He had given Wash his armor locker code when the rookie came in to see him, and sure enough, there hadn't been a replacement set put in. Wash had whispered that Maine had been given his healing unit by the Director because 'an Agent who gets themselves into situations such as Maine should have something to compensate.'

Wash hadn't pointed out that York had made the same joke about himself when he'd been assigned the unit. 

“Hey, it'll...”

“My name is Marcus,” he says softly, and he feels North's hand flinch away from him. 

“I... d-don't...”

“My name is Marcus Cole,” he insists, lifting his head up and turning it toward the source of North's voice. Which was near him. Close to him. He can feel it as surely as he can feel North's hand on his sweat shirt covered back. 

“You're not supposed to...”

“I don't give a fuck!” York shouts. Marcus shouts. “You really think I'm coming back from this? I can't  _see_ , North. What's left for me when...”

There are lips pressed against his. Sweet and gentle, warm and soft.

Marcus wants to cry. He wants to scream, he wants to yell and make the world stop. 

“We're approaching Angel on my Shoulder, boys,” Niner calls back softly. “Better make yourselves decent.”

He pushes North away when he stumbles down the ramp toward what he assumes to be the open arms of the medics he's been given over to.

* * * * * *

“Hey.”

Marcus freezes at the voice, grips his cane. His hands are shaking. After a moment his fingers come up to adjust his shades because he needs to do something with his hands. 

“I know you're not deaf.”

“Some people like to equate one to another,” Marcus whispers as a hand, warm and familiar, settles on his shoulder. “What are you doing here? Is...”

“Classified,” North answers, and Marcus listens to him shift around the table and sit down. Marcus's hand reaches to grab and stabilize his coffee mug because he knows the table he always sits at shakes when people sit at it. 

“Then why are you here?”

“Shit... sort of hit the fan.”

“And you need somewhere to lay low?”

“You always said that when it was over I could crash on your couch.”

“I said in my bed,” Marcus smiles softly, tilting his head curiously as he listened hard to mumbling in the background. “Besides, South is going to need the couch, isn't she?”

A hand reaches out and brushes over the back of his hand. The fingers are soft, which means North isn't wearing his undersuit. Which, he supposes, makes sense. If North needs to lay low, then it makes sense that he wouldn't be wearing his armor. Besides, he would have heard it, wouldn't he? 

“You sure no one is going to come looking for you with me?” 

“Honestly? I doubt Director Church even remembers your name.”

Well, wasn't  _that_ a comfort? The man responsible for his blinding didn't even know who he was.

* * * * * *

He wakes up to his bed cold and empty. There are no arms around him, no fingers stroking his hair, no comforting presence. 

No, that isn't true. There's the dog. Wyoming whimpers at the foot of the bed and at the sound Marcus pushes himself up, sighing. 

Every morning he has to process. Process the darkness that consumed him. Process the fact that he could sleep in and that there was no point to the exercises he always did. Process the fact that while North and South had spent a year as his live in roommates, they had disappeared one morning and he'd never heard from them again. 

They never even gave him their names. 

They never explained the soft whispering that North went into every now and then. Or the sudden silence and unexplained chuckles and...

Marcus pushes to his feet, puts his hand down, and Wyoming's head—golden Marcus thinks, because he's supposed to be a retriever, but he's never seen Wyoming himself—presses up against his head. 

“Morning boy. What you got for me?”

Wyoming pulls away, trots off by the sound of nails on the wood floors, and Marcus pushes to his feet. He shuffles to his bedroom door and by the time he gets there he hears Wyoming coming back. He holds his hand out and Wyoming drops the newspaper in this his hand before pressing against Marcus's leg and guiding him to the kitchen. The coffee pot has already brewed, and Marcus unrolls his paper under the automated reader, flips the switch, and turns to make his coffee. 

“Controversial military project brought to justice: the fall of Project Freelancer.”

Marcus goes rigid from the headline and turns back to sit down and listen. 

When the article finishes he calls the local store and asks them to send over a bottle of vodka and a bouquet of yellow roses. 

He doesn't know why, but he feels like it's the proper way to remember his fallen friends.

And he wonders, as he sits in his kitchen and strokes Wyoming, if the authorities would even care to come for him.


End file.
